Sunday, May 17, 2009

post#3

The class my family grew into was upper-middle class...though this was in Brasil. When we came to America, suddenly we were part of the poor lower classes. It was hard for my parents to get jobs and get used to this economy. Therefore, it was a long time before we made it into the middle class. Well, my father made it there, my mother is still considered poor..well through statistics. Because if you ask me, I think living comfortable is all you need. My father and his family are really big on social classes. Both in Brasil and in the states. He wants to keep the family name big, so now he has his own car company and is living well! My mother on the other hand doesnt really care much for economic issues or social classes. As long as we are eating well, we have a roof over our heads, and she has all the shoes she needs, she is A-ok. hahaha. This was easy to grow up around because I would get told by one parent that I need to make big money and get into a higher class so I can be treated like a queen. Then my mother would say all I need is what I can live off of and that class is just another reason to judge and cause tension between people. I mostly agree with my mother. I dont need many things. What I have is more than enough and I'm ok with being in the lower classes. I feel that when you do make it to the higher social classes you tend to loose value in the real important things and start putting value in more materialistic things that arent a necessity.
I think the fact that I grew up with both views I built a pretty good hypothesis for the social class war. In Brasil, when I was around 4 years old, these boys and girls who seemed to be about the same age as me would come knock on our door every morning to ask for bread or water because they were homeless and hungry. Seeing that and seeing my mother give them so much more than just bread and water made me realize that theres more value in what we take for granted everyday. I grew up knowing not to want too much of materialistic things. I got all I wanted but with alot of work, and even so, I never wanted alot. Through all of this I know that getting to the upper class in good because you can have a very comfortable life, where anything is at your reach. But who wants that? I think thats boring. I like hard work, and I like to work for what I have. Also, especially now that we are such big consumers, I like to think I'de rather stay in the lower classes. I dont want to have that guilt in the future because I was a contributer to the reason earth got demolished. :/


Though, when it came to gender roles in working classes, I grew up always being told that men and women are equal, so whatever work a man can do, a woman can as well! With that in mind I never necessarily cared much for which gender was doing what. Though, as I got older I started to realize that some jobs people prefer a man, or some a woman. This made me want to push myself into doing anything a boy could. So much that all my friends were suddenly boys and I was turning into a little tomboy. This did change my goals in a work field because now I too want to own a business and join many fields of work.

No comments:

Post a Comment